


Heartlight

by journeycat



Category: Circle of Magic - Tamora Pierce, Emelan - Tamora Pierce, PIERCE Tamora - Works
Genre: F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, Plot What Plot, Porn, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-08
Updated: 2011-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:48:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/journeycat/pseuds/journeycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are Sandry and Crane, and that is enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lisafer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisafer/gifts).



"I wish you wouldn't touch that."

Sandry very carefully hid her amusement at his irritation and also decidedly ignored him. The little tree that sat on his windowsill reminded her of Briar's _shakkan_ , and although it didn't have the ability to store magic, it still possessed a similar sense of _awareness_.

"What is it?"

Crane sighed heavily to mark his impatience. "It's an experiment," he explained. "I was trying to cultivate it into a _shakkan_ , but it resisted. I didn't have the heart to force it."

"Why didn't it want to?"

"For that you'll have to ask Rosethorn or Briar. Now, will you stop dithering over there and come back to bed?"

She complied and jumped into his bed so that it bounced squeakily. He rolled his eyes, but she had long since deciphered the difference between his gusty annoyance and his true anger. She stretched out beside him and propped her head up on her hand. He settled back against the headboard, his long spindly legs almost touching the very end.

"How are the greenhouses?" she asked idly.

Crane eyed her suspiciously. "Did Rosethorn put you up to this?"

She raised her brows archly. "Which part?"

To her delight, he laughed out loud. "Don't be coy," he said. "Rosethorn would send you to Anderran bandits before she ever sent you to my bed."

Sandry grinned at him. "True," she agreed. "No, I asked because I'm curious. Rosethorn's always complaining about it, so I just wanted to see how well they worked."

"I've gotten some beautiful fruits and flowers. You can tell Rosethorn that so I can come around and gloat at her expression."

"Even the tomatoes?"

He opened his mouth, and then scowled. "The tomatoes are just wonderful."

"Mmm."

"What was that?"

"Oh, nothing."

"No, what?"

"Well, it's just that..."

"Yes?"

"...I ate one of your tomatoes and they were _terrible_."

"You ate—they're not terrible, you petulant tomato-thief!"

The look of shock and outrage on his face was so ridiculous that Sandry burst into laughter. She laughed at him often; she thought it threw him, sometimes, because Crane was so used to be the leader, unyielding, a figure of respect. But he was so much wind and so little storm, as Tris once put it, and for all his bluster he had shown them all kindness, in his own way. Now she knew all the layers that made him so uniquely him, and she knew that there was such depth to him as to make him endless, an ocean of everything to drown in.

"I'm glad you think it's funny," he muttered, but there was the subtlest of upturns in his lips, as though he was downplaying a smile.

"I know it was terrible of me," she said apologetically, trying very had to quash her giggles. "I was just curious."

"Like a cat."

Now he was smiling, and Sandry impulsively leaned forward to brush her lips against his. Crane slipped his long, elegant hands behind her ears to cup her head and keep her there, deepening the kiss. She responded eagerly and pressed close against him, straddling him as she did. One hand dropped to her shoulder, and then lower, until he was squeezing the soft swell of her breast through the fabric of her nightgown. The nipple tightened immediately against his touch. She hissed against his mouth and, breathing heavily, Crane drew away.

"We just finished," he said thickly. He moved his hands to her hair, sifting through the tousled mess of golden-brown. "Besides, the entire Temple can probably hear you."

Sandry was trying to keep the overenthusiastic threads of her nightgown from unraveling; she had ruined many a nightgown (and dress, and breeches, and shirts, and underthings) before she realized the materials were reacting to her own desire. When his comment registered, she blushed.

"Oh, cat dirt," she said boldly, "they probably like it."

His eyes were smoldering, devouring her from parted mouth to curling toes. "Probably," he agreed absently.

He went to remove his hands from her hair, but his fingers snagged in a tangle and her head jerked back with it. The smooth curve of her neck was exposed and Crane leaned forward to touch his tongue against the pounding pulse in her neck. Her breath hitched, and he drew away. Now his eyes were scorching, heavy-lidded with something earthy and sensual. His languid pose belied his taut stomach muscles. She admired his long, lean torso, with its thin trail of dark hair that led down his navel and she traced a scar just under his breastbone with a fingertip. He never told her how he got it because he was Crane and he liked being mysterious.

"So you don't want to?" she murmured, stroking his thighs and smiling as she felt him swell beneath her, up between her legs, covered only by a bed sheet.

"You're a temptress," he accused. "I think you're only doing this because you know I have to get up early."

Sandry gazed at him in wide-eyed innocence. "Why would I do that?"

Even as he scowled, Crane began working his hands up her legs, shoving her nightgown up to expose her slim hips, her flat belly, and then further up to bare her breasts. He drew it over her head and tossed it to the side, and then sat up so that he could kiss her, long and slow.

She was already trembling before his hands even found their way back to her, sliding down her smooth back, teasing a nipple, tracing the curve of a jaw. One hand whispered against the delicate slit of her womanhood and she jumped, which made him chuckle low in his throat. He slipped fingers inside, testing, and found her wet and ready. He lifted her up to shove the sheet down and she came down on him in one clean stroke. She gasped, her breath coming out in some kind of keening whimper, as much from her own shivering quake of pleasure as from his reaction: Crane groaned, his eyes fluttering, and she reveled in knowing that he took as much from this as she did.

Tightening his grip on her, he began to move her in a sure, smooth rhythm, one that had him thrusting inside her thoroughly. She cried out softly with each slow plunge. The hard plane of his back felt hot beneath her palm. She arched her back so he had better access, and he held her up with one of his hands while the other brushed the tip of a breast, now well-exposed to his searching mouth. Sandry dug her nails into his shoulders while his tongue teased her nipple until it was swollen like a rosebud, and then he switched to the other.

"Crane," she sighed, trying not to beg. She barely recognized her voice as her own. It was low, sultry, dark honey.

He lifted his head and met her for a demanding kiss. Entwining fingers in his hair, she tugged his head back so that she could look at his face. He was focused and intent on her, staring at her parted mouth with his smoky eyes that flashed as she raked his hair with shaky fingers. His movements were more urgent now, and she could feel his harsh need in the fever with which he took her, in the hand that gripped her hair. Their hips were grinding hard together and she was keening, moaning, feeling herself being driven to that edge to which only Crane could take her, to that quaking eruption of stars and sunlight and rapture.

Sandry squeezed his waist with her thighs, commanding him to take her to that brink. He willingly obliged, maneuvering so that every hard, fast thrust had him buried inside her, filling her until she felt as though she would fly apart. She was riding him in a frenzy of single-minded passion. All she was aware of was the mingling of their ragged breaths and the look of heavy languor on his face that told her _oh yes, this is good._ His hands grabbed at her breasts, playing his fingers over sensitive flesh and tugging, pinching, caressing.

She almost had it—just a little harder, a little faster—he was murmuring urgent encouragement into her ear and his breath was hot against her neck—she was clawing at his back desperately, holding her breath, and her whole body was quivering like a taut bowstring begging to be loosened—

—and then something exploded and she was being swept away in this tsunami of pure ecstasy that flooded her veins. Her cry was muffled in the crook of his neck. Before the throes of her climax had even faded, Crane pumped his hips harder, his hands feverishly exploring her body for his own enjoyment. He was pounding frantically against her so that her already-satiated core throbbed again with the friction. Muscles in his stomach clenched and she kissed the sweet spot behind his ear that always got him aroused.

She leaned further back so that he was fully sheathed inside her, and with a kind of strangled groan he heaved against her, one hand grasping a breast in a bruising grip and the other flat against her back to push her further on him. She felt a flood of delicious warmth inside her that was his own climax.

And then Crane collapsed against the headboard with eyes closed, gasping. Sweat glistened at his hairline and in the hollow of his throat, and Sandry could feel it trickling down her cleavage as well. She untangled herself from him and rolled off, still throbbing between her legs from the aftermath of pleasure, still trembling from the exertion.

"That was good," he said after awhile, a little breathless. "That was very good."

"It was," she agreed. She leaned over to cross her arms on his chest and rested her chin on them, so that she could see him better.

Crane cracked open an eye at her. "Better than usual?"

"As good as usual."

He nodded, looking smug. She hid a smile and made a mental note to bring him down a peg or two tomorrow. His large ego needed to be both stroked and held in check, and there were some things that should only be stroked. Sex involved a lot of stroking, both physically and metaphorically.

"Oh." Sandry bolted up. "My light—"

"Mmm?"

"I forgot my light. I can't sleep without it."

"Your—oh, your light-crystal. Here, will this work?"

Crane unfolded his long legs and moved to the windowsill, where the almost- _shakkan_ sat. His form blocked it from view, but the next thing she knew it was shining with brilliant white-gold light. She gasped.

"What did you do?"

She scrambled off the bed and came up beside him. This close, she could see that the little tree was covered in what looked like droplets of dew, clinging to the branches and leaves, and that each drop glowed like a star.

"When I tried to feed magic to it, it would hold it until you watered it and then it would just discharge the magic into the water, making it glow," he explained. "The thing is, it would just absorb the water, and therefore the magic, all over again. So it would just keep expelling the magic. It used to keep lighting up whenever it wanted to, but that got really annoying really fast when it kept going off at midnight. I was able to train it to go off at my touch as long as it's wet. It seems happy enough with that as long as I do it once a day, to keep the magic from rooting too firmly in it."

"It's so pretty," Sandry breathed. She touched a leaf, and a droplet slipped on to her fingertip. It continued to glow.

"Well, I was actually going to—uh, give it to you."

She glanced up at him in surprise, and saw that he looked awkward. _Is he blushing...?_ He continued, "I assumed you could use it at night. You'd save power in that crystal, anyway."

Touched, she threw her arms around his waist and exclaimed, "Thank you! I just love it, and it's _beautiful_!"

Crane looked very awkward now, but she didn't even care. She was eighteen and had yet to grow out of her childish fear of the dark, and now he was giving her this light-tree to ease that fear. It was one of the greatest kindnesses he had shown her. She grabbed his face and pulled him down for an exuberant kiss.

When she pulled away, he was smiling, though his cheeks were still pink. "You'll have to treat it well," he warned unnecessarily. "Briar will probably have tips for you."

"Oh, I will." She gazed at it happily for a moment, and then he was steering her back toward the bed.

"Now, can we please go to sleep?" he asked in exasperation. "I'm exhausted."

She obliged and crawled over him as he laid down to get to her side. Crane pulled the covers up over them, and she burrowed up against him with her head on his chest. His heart beat a steady staccato beat. She reached up to kiss him, and his tongue very sweetly caressed hers until she was edging her way up his torso.

" _Again_?" he blurted, aghast. He looked positively horrified, and she giggled. "I don't think I have it in me."

"Tomorrow then," she said. "I'm tired, anyway."

He had to wake up before dawn for Temple business, but if she woke up with him she could persuade him to take her before he left. He was easily persuadable.

He must have read something in her face because he sighed as though resigned. Still, he dark eyes burned with anticipation. He hadn't taken her for an amorous person when they began their relationship. She thought it still surprised him a little, when she was the aggressor.

Crane kissed her again, and tucked her comfortably in the crook of his arm. He smelled of sweat, and sex, and all that made him Crane. With the tree shining against her eyelids, Sandry settled down for sleep.

He didn't whisper sweet nothings in her ear and she didn't beg for them. They were Sandry and Crane, and that was enough.


End file.
